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EVERETT'S ORATION, 



3iell^eveti ^X Concovir* 



AN 



ORATION 



Siflfl^irrfir mi ^^nt^tW^ 



APRIL THE NINETEENTH, 



1825. 



BY EDWARD EVERETT. 

11 



BOSTON : 

PUBLISHED BY CUMMINGS, HILLIARD, AND COMPANY. 
1825. 






o?^/ 



DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, TO WIT: 

District Clerk's Office. 

Be it remembered, that on the twenty-first day of May, A. D. 1825, 
in the forty-ninth year of the Independence of the United States of Amer- 
ica, Cummings, Hilliard, & Co. of the said district, have deposited in this 
office the title of a book, the right whereof they claim as proprietors, 
in the words following, to wit : 

" An Oration delivered at Concord, April the nineteenth, 1825. By 
Edward Everett." 

In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, enti- 
tled, '' An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies 
of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such cop- 
ies, during the times therein mentioned:" and also to an Act, entitled, 
" An Act, supplementary to an Act, entitled, ' An Act for the encourage- 
ment of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to 
the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein 
mentioned ;' and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of design- 
ing, engraving, and etching historical, and other prints." 

^ ° ° JNO W. DAVIS, 

Clerk of the District of Massaclmsetls, 



University Press. — Hilliard Sf Metcalf* 



Concord, April 19, 1825. 
Hon. Edward Everett, 

Dear Sir, 

The Committee of Arrangements have instructed me 
to express their thanks to you, for the very interesting ad- 
dress delivered by you this day, and to request you to fa- 
vor them with a copy for the press. 
Your obedient servant, 

(Signed) N.BROOKS, J J-^i,^, 



ORATION. 



Fellow Citizens, 

The voice of patriotic and filial duty has 
called us together, to celebrate the fiftieth anniver- 
sary of an ever memorable day. The subject, 
which this occasion presents to our consideration, 
almost exceeds the grasp of the human mind. 
The appearance of a new state in the great family 
of nations is one of the most important topics of 
reflection, that can ever be addressed to us. In 
the case of America, the interest, the magnitude, 
and the difficulty of this subject are immeasurably 
increased. Our progress has been so rapid, the 
interval has been so short between the first planta- 
tions in the wilderness and the full development 
of our political institutions ; there has been such a 
visible agency of single characters in affecting the 
1 



2 

condition of the country, such an almost instanta- 
neous expansion of single events into consequences 
of incalculable importance, that we find ourselves 
deserted by almost all the principles and precedents, 
drawn from the analogy of other states. Men 
have here seen, felt, and acted themselves, what 
in most other countries has been the growth of 
centuries. 

Take your station for instance on Connecticut 
river. Every thing about you, whatsoever you 
behold or approach, bears witness, that you are a 
citizen of a powerful and prosperous state. It is 
just seventy years, since the towns, which you now 
contemplate with admiration as the abodes of a 
numerous, increasing, refined, enterprising popula- 
tion, safe in the enjoyment of life's best bles- 
sings, were wasted and burned by the savages 
of the wilderness ; and their inhabitants by hun- 
dreds, — the old and the young, the minister of 
the gospel, and the mother with her new born 
babe, —were wakened at midnight by the warhoop, 
dragged from their beds, and marched with bleeding 
feet across the snow-clad mountains, — to be sold as 
slaves into the cornfields and kitcliens of the 
French in Canada. Go back eighty years farther ; 
and the same barbarous foe is on the skirts of your 



oldest settlements, at jour own doors. As late as 
1676, ten or twelve citizens of Concord were 
slain or carried into captivity, who had gone to 
meet the savage hordes in their attack on Sudbury, 
in which the brave Captain Wadsworth and his 
companions fell. 

These contrasts regard the political strength of 
our country ; the growth in national resources 
presents a case of increase still more astonishing, 
though less adapted to move the feelings. By 
the last valuation, the aggregate property of Mas- 
sachusetts is estimated at something less than 
three hundred millions. By the valuation made 
in 1780, the property of Massachusetts and Maine 
was estimated at eleven millions. 

This unexampled rapidity of our national 
growth, while it gives to our history more than 
the interest of romance, leaves us often in doubt, 
what is to be ascribed to the cooperation of a 
train of incidents and characters, following in long 
succession upon each other ; and what is to be 
referred to the vast influence of single important 
events. On the one hand, we think we trace a 
series of causes and effects, running back into the 
history of the dark ages in Europe, and visibly 
exerting an influence on the American colonies ; 



4 

and on the other, we witness a rapidity, an ener- 
gy, a precision in the movements of the nation 
toward improvement and power, which seem to 
characterize the agency of individual events and 
men. In the first view, we feel constrained to 
surrender up the fortunes of our country, as a por- 
tion of the chain of events, which lengthens 
onward, by blind fatality, from the creation of the 
world, and brings about, in each successive age, 
the same routine of rise, progress, and decay. 
In the other view, we behold the action of a new 
and original political life, a fresh and hopeful 
national existence ; nourished, strengthened, and 
matured under the operation of peculiar causes 
of unexampled energy. 

That great, that astonishing incident in human 
affairs, the Revolution of America, as seen on the 
day of its portentous, or rather let me say, of its 
auspicious commencement, is the theme of our 
present consideration. To what shall Ave direct 
our thoughts ? On the one hand, we behold a 
connexion of events ; the time and circumstances 
of the original discovery ; the system of coloniza- 
tion ; the settlements of the pilgrims ; their con- 
dition, temper, and institutions ; their singular 
political relation with the mother country ; their 



long and doubtful struggle with the savage tribes ; 
their collisions with the royal governors ; their co- 
operation in the British wars ; with all the influ- 
ences of their geographical and physical condition ; 
uniting to constitute what I may call the political 
national education of America, by forming the 
public mind, nerving the arm, and firing the heart 
for the events of that day, which we now com- 
memorate. When we take this survey, we feel 
that we ought to divide the honors of the Revo- 
lution with the great men of the colony in every 
generation ; with the Winslows and the Pepperells, 
the Cookes and the Mathers, the Winthrops and 
the Bradfords, and all who labored and acted in 
the cabinet, the desk, or the field, for the one 
great cause. On the other hand, when we dwell 
upon the day itself, every thing else seems lost in 
the comparison. Had our forefathers failed, on 
that day of trial, which we now celebrate ; had 
their votes and their resolves (as was taunt- 
ingly predicted on both sides of the Atlantic) 
ended in the breath, in which they began ; had the 
rebels laid down their arms, as they were command- 
ed ; and the military stores, which had been fru- 
gally treasured up for this crisis, been, without re- 
sistance, destroyed ;— then the Revolution had been 



6 

at an end, or rather never had been begun ; the heads 
of Hancock and Adams and then- brave colleagues 
would have been exposed in ghastly triumph on 
Temple-bar ; a military despotism would have been 
firmly fixed in the colonies ; the patriots of Mas- 
sachusetts would have been doubly despised, the 
scorn of their enemies, the scorn of their deluded 
countrymen ; the cry of liberty, which they had 
raised from the shore to the mountains, would 
have been turned back in a cry of disdain ; and the 
heart of this ^reat people, then beating and almost 
bursting for freedom, would have been struck 
cold and dead, and, for aught we can now reason, 
forever. 

There are those, who object to such a celebra- 
tion as this, as tending to keep up or to awaken a 
hostile sentiment toward England. But I do not 
feel the force of this scruple. In the first place, 
it was not England, but the English ministerial 
party of the day, and a small circle in that party, 
which projected the measures that resulted in our 
Revolution. The rights of America found steady 
and powerful asserters in England. Lord Chat- 
ham declared to the House of Peers that he was 
glad America had resisted, and alluding to the 
fact that he had a son in the British army, he 



added, " that none of his blood should serve in 
this detested cause." Nay, even the ministers 
that imposed the stamp duty, the measure which 
hastened the spirit of America to a crisis, which 
it might not have reached in a century. Lord 
Mansfield, the Duke of Grafton, the Earl of Shel- 
burne. Lord Camden, rose, one after another, and 
cisserted in the House of Lords, that they had no 
share in the measures which were proposed by the 
very cabinet, of which they were leading mem- 
bers. 

But I must go further. Did faithful history 
compel us to cast on all England united the 
reproach of those measures, which drove our 
fathers to arms ; and were it, in consequence, the 
unavoidable effect of these celebrations to revive 
the feelings of revolutionary times in the bosoms 
of the aged ; to kindle those feelings anew, in the 
susceptible hearts of the young ; it would still be 
our duty, on every becoming occasion, in the 
strongest colors, and in the boldest lines we can 
command, to retrace the picture of the times that 
tried men's souls. We owe it to our fathers, we 
owe it to our children. A pacific and friendly 
feeling towards England is the duty of this nation ; 
but it is not our only duty, it is not our first duty. 



8 

America owes an earlier and a higher duty to the 
great and good men, who caused her to be a 
nation ; who, at an expense of treasure, a con- 
tempt of peril, a prodigality of blood — the purest 
and noblest that ever flowed, — of which we can 
now hardly conceive, vindicated to this continent 
a place among the nations of the earth. I can- 
not consent, out of tenderness to the memory of 
the Gages, the Hutchinsons, the Grenvilles and 
Norths, the Dartmouths and Hillsboroughs, to 
cast a veil over the labors and the sacrifices of the 
Quincys, the Adamses, the Hancocks, and the 
Warrens. I am not willing to give up to the 
ploughshare the soil wet with our fathers' blood ; 
no ! not even to plant the olive of peace in the 
furrow. 

There is not a people on earth so abject, as to 
think that national courtesy requires them to hush 
up the tale of the glorious exploits of their fathers 
and countrymen. France is at peace with Austria 
and Prussia ; but she does not demolish her beau- 
tiful bridges, baptized with the names of the bat- 
tle fields, where Napoleon annihilated their armies; 
nor tear down the columns, moulten out of the 
accumulated heaps of their captive artillery. 
England is at peace with France and Spain, but 



9 

does she suppress the names of Trafalgar and the 
Nile ; does she overthrow the towers of Blenheim 
castle, eternal monuments of the disasters of 
France ; does she tear down from the rafters of 
her chapels, where they have for ages waved 
in triumph, consecrated to the God of battles, the 
banners of Cressy and Agincourt ? — No ; she is 
wiser ; wiser, did I say ? she is truer, juster to the 
memory of her fathers and the spirit of her child- 
ren. The national character, in some of its most 
important elements, must be formed, elevated, 
and strengthened from the materials which history 
presents. The great objection which has been 
urged, and urged at the point of the bayonet and 
at the mouth of the cannon, by the partisans of 
arbitrary power in Europe, against revolutionary 
and popular governments, is, that they want a 
historical basis, which alone, they say, can im- 
part stability and legality to public institutions. 
But certainly the historical basis is of much greater 
moment to the spirit, than to the institutions of a 
people ; and for the reason, that the spirit its(>lf of 
a nation is far more important than its institutions 
at any moment. Let the spirit be sound and true, 
and it will sooner or later find or make a remedy 
for defective institutions. But though the insti- 
2 



10 

tutions should surpass, in theoretic beauty, the 
fabled perfection of Utopia or Atlantis, without a 
free spirit, the people will be slaves ; they will be 
slaves of the most despicable kind, — pretended 
freemen. 

And how is the spirit of a people to be formed 
and animated and cheered, but out of the store- 
house of its historic recollections ? Are we to be 
eternally ringing the changes upon Marathon and 
Thermopylae ; and going back to read in obscure 
texts of Greek and Latin of the great examplars 
of patriotic virtue ? I thank God, that we can 
find them nearer home, in our own country, on 
our own soil ; — that strains of the noblest sen- 
timent, that ever swelled in the breast of man, are 
breathing to us out of every page of our country's 
history, in the native eloquence of our mother 
tongue ; — that the colonial and the provincial coun- 
cils of America, exhibit to us models of the spirit 
and chara(;ter, which gave Greece and Rome their 
name and their praise among the nations. Here 
we ought to go for our instruction ; — the lesson 
is plain, it is clear, it is applicable. \\ hen 
we go to ancient history, we are bewildered 
with the difference of manners and institutions. 



11 

We are willing to pay our tribute of applause 
to the memory of Leoiiidas, who fell nobly for his 
country, in the face of the foe. But when we 
trace him to his home, we are confounded at the 
reflection, that the same Spartan heroism to 
which he sacrificed himself at Thermopylse, would 
have led him to tear his only child, if it happened 
to be a sickly babe — the very object for which all 
that is kind and good in man rises up to plead — 
from the bosom of its mother, and carry it out to 
be eaten by the wolves of Taygetus. We feel a 
glow of admiration at the heroism displayed at 
Marathon, by the ten thousand champions of in- 
vaded Greece ; but w^e cannot forget that the tenth 
part of the number were slaves, unchained from 
the workshops and door-posts of their masters, to 
go and fight the battles of freedom. I do not 
mean that these examples are to destroy the inter- 
est with which we read the history of ancient 
times ; they possibly increase that interest, by the 
singular contrast they exhibit. But they do warn 
us, if we need the warning, to seek our great 
practical lessons of patriotism at home ; out of 
the exploits and sacrifices, of which our own coun- 
try is the theatre ; out of the characters of our 
own fathers. Them we know, the high-souled. 



12 

natural, unaffected, the citizen heroes. We 
know what happy firesides they left for the 
cheerless camp. We know with what pacific 
habits they dared the perils of the field. There is 
no mystery, no romance, no madness, under the 
name of chivalry, about them. It is all resolute, 
manly resistance, for conscience' and liberty's sake, 
not merely of an overwhelming power, but of all 
the force of long-rooted habits, and native love of 
order and peace. 

Above all, their blood calls to us from the soil 
which we tread ; it beats in our veins ; it cries to 
us, not merely in the thrilling words of one of the 
first victims in this cause, — " My sons, scorn to be 
slaves;" — but it cries with a still more moving 
eloquence — " My sons, forget not your fathers." 
Fast, oh, too fast, with all our efforts to pre- 
vent it, their precious memories are dying away. 
Notwithstanding our numerous written memorials, 
much of what is known of those eventful times 
dwells but in the recollection of a iew revered 
survivors, and with them is rapidly perishing, 
unrecorded and irretrievable. How many pru- 
dent counsels, conceived in perplexed times ; how 
many heart-stirring words, uttered when liberty 
was treason ; how many brave and heroic deeds. 



13 

performed when the halter, not the laurel, was 
the promised meed of patriotic daring, — are already 
lost and forgotten in the graves of their authors. 
How little do we, — although we have been permit- 
ted to hold converse with the venerable remnants 
of that day, — how little do we know of their dark 
and anxious hours ; of their secret meditations ; 
of the hurried and perilous events of the moment- 
ous struggle. And while they are dropping round 
us like the leaves of autumn, while scarce a 
week passes that does not call away some member 
of the veteran ranks, already so sadly thinned, 
shall we make no effort to hand down the tradi- 
tions of their day to our children ; to pass the 
torch of liberty, which we received in all the 
splendour of its first enkindling, bright and flam- 
ing to those who stand next us in the line ; so 
that when we shall come to be gathered to the 
dust where our fathers are laid, we may say to 
our sons and our grandsons, " If we did not amass, 
we have not squandered your inheritance of glory ? " 
Let us then faithfully go back to those all-im- 
portant days. Let us commemorate the events, 
with which the momentous revolutionary crisis 
was brought on ; let us gather up the traditions 
which still exist ; let us show the world, that if 



14 

we are not called to follow the example of our 
fathers, we are at least not insensible to the worth 
of their characters ; not indifferent to the sacrifices 
and trials, by which they purchased our prosper- 
ity. 

Time would fail us to recount the measures by 
which the way was prepared for the revolution ; — 
the stamp act ; its repeal, with the declaration of 
the right to tax America ; the landing of troops 
in Boston, beneath the batteries of fourteen vessels 
of war, lying broadside to the town, with springs 
on their cables, their guns loaded, and matches 
smoking ; the repeated insults, and finally the 
massacre of the fifth of March, resulting from this 
military occupation ; and the Boston Port-Bill, 
by which the final catastrophe was hurried on. 
Nor can we dwell upon the appointment at Salem, 
on the seventeenth of June 1774, of the delegates 
to the continental congress ; of the formation at 
Salem, in the following October, of the provincial 
congress ; of the decided measures, which were 
taken by that noble assembly, at Concord and at 
Cambridge ; of the preparations they made against 
the worst, by organizing the militia, providing 
stores, and appointing commanders. All this was> 
done by the close of the year 1774. 



15 

At length the memorable year of 1775 arrived. 
The plunder of the provincial stores at Medford, 
and the attempt to seize the cannon at Salem, had 
produced a highly irritated state of the public 
mind. The friends of our rights in England made 
a vigorous effort, in the month of March, to avert 
the tremendous crisis that impended. On the 
twenty-second of that month, Mr Burke spoke the 
last word of conciliation and peace. He spoke it 
in a tone and with a power befitting the occasion and 
the man ; — he spoke it to the northwest wind. 
Eight days after, at that season of the year when 
the prudent New England husbandman repairs the 
inclosures of his field, for the protection of the 
fruits of nature's bounty which ere long will cov- 
er them. General Gage sent out a party of eleven 
hundred men to overthrow the stone walls in the 
neighbourhood of Boston, by way of opening 
and levelling the arena for the bloody contest he 
designed to bring on. With the same view, in 
the months of February and March, his officers 
were sent in disguise to traverse the country, to 
make military surveys and sketches of its roads 
and passes, to obtain accounts of the stores at 
Concord and Worcester, and to communicate with 
the small number of disaffected Americans. These 



16 

disguised officers were here at Concord, on the 
twentieth of March ; and received treacherous or 
unsuspecting information of the places, where the 
provincial stores were concealed. I mention this 
only to show, that our fathers, in their arduous 
contest, had every thing to contend with ; secret as 
well as open foes ; treachery in the cabinet, as 
well as power in the field. But I need not add, 
that they possessed not only the courage and the 
resolution, but the vigilance and care, demanded for 
the crisis. In November 1774, a society had 
been formed in Boston, principally of the mechan- 
ics of that town, — a class of men to whom the 
revolutionary cause was as deeply indebted, as to 
any other in America, — for the express purpose of 
closely watching the movements of the open and 
secret foes of the country. In the long and dreary 
nights of a 'New England winter, they patrolled 
the streets ; and not a movement, which concerned 
the cause, escaped their vigilance. Not a measure 
of the royal governor, but was in their possession, 
in a few hours after it was communicated to his 
confidential officers. Nor was it manly patriotism 
alone, whose spirit was thus aroused in the cause. 
The daughters of America were inspired with the 
same noble temper, that animated their fathers, 



17 

their husbands, and their brethren. The historian 
tells us, that the first intimation communicated to the 
patriots of the impending commencement of hos- 
tilities, came from a daughter of liberty, unequally 
yoked with an enemy of her country's rights. 

With all these warnings, and all the vigilance 
with which the royal troops were watched, none 
supposed the fatal moment was hurrying so rapid- 
ly on. On Saturday, April fifteenth, the Provin- 
cial Congress adjourned their session in this place, 
to meet on the tenth of May. On the very same 
day, Saturday the fifteenth of April, the companies 
of grenadiers and light infantry in Boston, the 
flower not merely of the royal garrison, but of the 
British army, were taken off their regular duty, 
under the pretence of learning a new military 
exercise. At the midnight following, the boats of 
the transport ships, which had been previously 
repaired, were launched, and moored for safety 
under the sterns of the vessels of war. Not one 
of these movements, — least of all, that which took 
place beneath the shades of midnight, — was un- 
observed hy the vigilant sons of liberty. The 
next morning, Colonel Paul Revere, a very active 
member of the patriotic society just mentioned, 
was despatched by Dr Joseph Warren to John 
3 



18 

Hancock and Samuel Adams, then at Lexington, 
whose seizure was threatened by the royal gover- 
nor. So early did these distinguished patriots re- 
ceive the intelligence, that preparations for an 
important movement were on foot. Justly con- 
sidering, however, that some object besides the 
seizure of two individuals was probably designed, 
in the movement of so large a force, they counsel- 
led the Committee of Safety to order the distribu- 
tion into the neighbouring towns, of the stores 
collected at Concord. Colonel Revere, on his 
return from this excursion on the sixteenth 
of April, in order to guard against any ac- 
cident, which might make it impossible at the 
last moment to give information from Boston of 
the departure of the troops, concerted with his 
friends in Charlestown, that whenever the British 
forces should embark in their boats to cross into 
the country, two lanterns should be shown in 
North Church steeple, and one, should they march 
out by Roxbury. 

Thus was the meditated blow prepared for be- 
fore it was struck ; and we almost smile at the 
tardy prudence of the British commander, who, 
on Tuesday the eighteenth of April, despatched ten 
sergeants, who were to dine at Cambridge, and at 

« 



19 

nightfall scatter themselves on the roads from 
Boston to Concord, to prevent notice of the pro- 
jected expedition from reaching the country. 

At length the momentous hour arrives, as 
big with consequences to man, as any that ever 
struck in his history. The darkness of night is 
still to shroud the rash and fatal measures, with 
which the liberty of America is hastened on. 
The highest officers in the British army are as 
yet ignorant of the nature of the meditated blow. 
At nine o'clock in the evening of the eighteenth, 
Lord Percy is sent for by the governor to receive 
the information of the design. On his way back 
to his lodgings, he finds the very movements, 
which had been just communicated to him in con- 
fidence by the commander in chief, a subject of 
conversation in a group of patriotic citizens in the 
street. He hastens back to General Gage and 
tells him he is betrayed ; and orders are instantly 
given to permit no American to leave the town. 
But the order is five minutes too late. Dr War- 
ren, the President of the Committee of Safety, 
though he had returned at nightfall from the meet- 
ing at West Cambridge, was already in possession 
of the whole design ; and instantly despatched 
two messengers to Lexington, Mr William Dawes, 



20 

who went out by Roxbury, and Colonel Paul 
Revere, who crossed to Charlestown. The Col- 
onel received this summons, at ten o'clock on 
Tuesday night ; the lanterns were immediately 
lighted up in North Church steeple ; and in this 
way, before a man of the soldiery was embarked 
in the boats, the news of their coming was trav- 
elling with the rapidity of light, through the 
country.* 

Having accomplished this precautionary meas- 
ure. Colonel Revere repaired to the north part of 
the town, where he constantly kept a boat in read- 
iness, in which he was now rowed by two friends 
across the river, a little to the eastward of the 
spot where the Somerset man-of-war was moored, 
between Boston and Charlestown. It was then 
young flood, the ship was swinging round upon 
the tide, and the moon was just rising upon 
this midnight scene of solemn anticipation. 
Colonel Revere was safely landed in Charles- 
town, where his signals had already been ob- 
served. He procured a horse from Deacon Lar- 
kin for the further pursuit of his errand. That 
he would not be permitted to accomplish it, with- 
out risk of interruption, was evident from the in- 
* See note A. 



21 

formation which he received from Mr Richard 
Devens, a member of the Committee of Safety, 
that on his way from West Cambridge, where the 
committee sat, he had encountered several British 
officers, well armed and mounted, going up the road. 
At eleven o'clock. Colonel Revere started upon 
his eventful errand. After passing Charlestown 
neck, he saw two men on horseback under a tree. 
On approaching them he perceived them by the 
light of the moon to be British officers. One of 
them immediately tried to intercept, and the other 
to seize him. The Colonel instantly turned back 
toward Charlestown, and then struck into the 
Medford road. The officer in pursuit of him, 
endeavouring to cut him off, plunged into a clay- 
pond, in the corner between the two roads, and 
the Colonel escaped. He accordingly pursued 
his way to Medford, awoke the captain of the 
minute men there, and giving the alarm at every 
house on the road, passed on through West Cam- 
bridge to Lexington. There he delivered his 
message to Messrs Hancock and Adams,* and 
there also he was shortly after joined by Mr 
William Dawes, the messenger who had gone out 
by Roxbury. 

* See note B. 



22 

After staying a short time at Lexington, Messrs 
Revere and Dawes, at about one o^clock of the 
morning of the nineteenth of April, started for 
Concord, to communicate the intelligence there. 
They were soon overtaken on the way by Dr 
Samuel Prescott of Concord, who joined them in 
giving the alarm at every house on the road. 
About half way from Lexington to Concord, while 
Dawes and Prescott were alarming a house on 
the road. Revere, being about one hundred rods in 
advance, saw two officers in the road, of the same 
appearance as those he had escaped in Charles- 
town. He called to his companions to assist him 
in forcing his way through them, but was himself 
instantly surrounded by four officers. These officers 
had previously thrown down the wall into an 
adjoining field, and the Americans, prevented from 
forcing their way onward, passed into the field. 
Dr Prescott, although the reins of his horse had 
been cut in the struggle with the officers, succeed- 
ed, by leaping a stone wall, in making his escape 
from the field and reaching Concord. Revere 
aimed at a wood, but was there encountered by 
six more officers, and was with his companion 
made prisoner. The British officers, who had 
already seized three other Americans, having 



23 

learned from their prisoners that the Avhole coun- 
try was alarmed, thought it best for their own 
safety to hasten back, taking their prisoners with 
them. Near Lexington meetinghouse, on their 
return, the British officers heard the militia, who 
were on parade, firing a volley of guns. Terrified 
at this, they compelled Revere to give up his horse, 
and then pushing forward at full gallop, escaped 
down the road. 

The morning was now advanced to about 
four o'clock, nor was it then known at Lexing- 
ton that the British were so near at hand. Col- 
onel Revere again sought Messrs Hancock and 
Adams at the house of the Reverend Mr Clark, 
and it was thought expedient by their friends, 
who had kept watch there during the night, that 
these eminent patriots should remove toward Wo- 
burn. Having attended them to a house on the 
Wobiirn road, where they proposed to stop, 
Colonel Revere returned to Lexington to watch 
the progress of events. He soon met a person at 
full gallop, who informed him that the British 
troops were coming up the road. Hastening now 
to the public house, to secure some papers of 
Messrs Hancock and Adams, Colonel Revere saw 
the British troops pressing forward in full array. 



24 

It was now seven hours, since these troops 
were put in motion. They were mustered at ten 
o'clock of the night preceding, on the Boston 
Common, and embarked, to the number of eight 
hundred grenadiers and light infantry, in the boats 
of the British squadron. They landed at Phipps' 
Farm, a little to the south of Lechmere's Point, 
and on disembarking, a day's provision was dealt 
out to them. Pursuing the path across the 
marshes, they emerged into the old Charlestown 
and West Cambridge road. 

And here let us pause a moment in the narra- 
tion, to ask, who are the men and what is the 
cause ? Is it an army of Frenchmen and Cana- 
dians, who in earlier days had often run the line 
between them and us, with havock and fire, and 
who have now come to pay back the debt of 
defeat and subjugation ? Or is it their ancient 
ally of the woods, the stealthy savage, — borne in 
his light canoe, with muffled oars, over the mid- 
night waters, — creeping like the felon wolf 
through our villages, that he may start up at dawn, 
to wage a war of surprise, of plunder, and of hor- 
ror against the slumbering cradle and the defence- 
less fireside ? O no ! It is the disciplined armies 
of a brave, a christian, a kindred people ; led by 



25 

gallant officers, the choice sons of England ; and 
they are going to seize, and secure for the halter, 
men whose crime is, that they have dared to utter 
in the English tongue, on this side of the ocean, 
the principles which gave, and give England her 
standing among the nations ; they are going to 
plunge their swords in the breasts of men, who 
fifteen years before, on the plains of Abraham, 
stood, and fought, and conquered by their side. But 
they go not unobserved ; the tidings of their 
approach are travelling before them ; the faithlul 
messengers have aroused the citizens from their 
slumbers ; alarm guns are answering to each other, 
and spreading the news from village to village ; 
the tocsin is heard, at this unnatural hour, from 
steeples, that never before rung with any other 
summons than that of the gospel of peace ; the 
sacred tranquillity of the hour is startled with all 
the mingled sounds of preparation, — of gathering 
bands, and resolute though unorganized resistance. 
The Committee of Safety, as has been observed, 
had set, the preceding day, at West Cambridge ; 
and three of its respected members, Gerry, Lee, and 
Orne, had retired to sleep, in the public house, 
where the session of the committee was held. So 
difficult was it, notwithstanding all that had passed, 



26 

to realize that a state of things could exist, be- 
tween England and America, in which American 
citizens should be liable to be torn from their beds 
bj an armed force at midnight, that the members of 
the Committee of Safety, though forewarned of the 
approach of the British troops, did not even think 
it necessary to retire from their lodgings. On the 
contrary, they rose from their beds and went to 
their windows to gaze on the unwonted sight, the 
midnight march of armies through the peaceful 
hamlets of New England. Half the column had 
already passed, when a flank guard was promptly 
detached to search the public house, no doubt in the 
design of arresting the members of the Committee 
of Safety, who might be there. It was only at 
this last critical moment, that Mr Gerry and his 
friends bethought themselves of flight, and without 
time even to clothe themselves, escaped naked into 
the fields. 

By this time Colonel Smith, who commanded 
the expedition, appears to have been alarmed at 
the indications of a general rising throughout the 
country. The light infantry companies were now 
detached and placed under the command of Major 
Pitcairne, for the purpose of hastening forward, to 
secure the bridges at Concord ; and thus cut off 



27 

the communication between this place and the 
towns north and west of it. Before these com- 
panies could reach Lexington, the officers already 
mentioned, who had arrested Colonel Revere, 
joined their advancing countrymen, and reported 
that five hundred men were drawn up in Lexing- 
ton, to resist the king's troops. On receiving this 
exaggerated account, the British light infantry w^as 
halted, to give time for the grenadiers to come 
up, that the whole together might move forward 
to the work of death. 

The company assembled on Lexington Green, 
which the British officers, in their report, had 
swelled to five hundred, consisted of sixty or seven- 
ty of the militia of the place. Information had 
been received about nightfall, both by private 
means and by communications from the Commit- 
tee of Safety, that a strong party of officers had 
been seen on the road, directing their course to- 
ward Lexington. In consequence of this intelli- 
gence, a body of about thirty of the militia, well 
armed, assembled early in the evening ; a guard of 
eight men under Colonel William Munroe, then a 
sergeant in the company, was stationed at Mr 
Clark's ; and three men were sent off to give the 
alarm at Concord. These three messengers were 



28 

however stopped on their way, as has been mention- 
ed, by the British officers, who had ah'eady passed 
onward. One of their number, Elijah Sanderson, 
has lately died at Salem at an advanced age. A 
little after midnight, as has been observed, Messrs 
Revere and Dawes arrived with the certain inform- 
ation, that a very large body of the royal troops 
was in motion. The alarm was now generally 
given to the inhabitants of Lexington, messengers 
were sent down the road to ascertain the move- 
ments of the troops, and the militia company under 
Captain John Parker appeared on the green to 
the number of one hundred and thirty. The roll 
w^as duly called at this perilous midnight muster, 
and some answered to their names for the last time 
on earth. The company was now ordered to load 
with powder and ball, and awaited in anxious ex- 
pectation the return of those who had been sent 
to reconnoitre the enemy. One of them, in con- 
sequence of some misinformation, returned and re- 
ported that there was no appearance of troops on 
the road from Boston. Under this harassing 
uncertainty and contradiction, the militia were 
dismissed, to await the return of the other expresses 
and with orders to be in readiness at the beat of 
the drum. One of these messengers was made pris- 



29 

oner by the British, whose march was so cautious, 
that they remained undiscovered till within a mile 
and a half of Lexington meetinghouse, and time was 
scarce left for the last messenger to return with 
the tidings of their approach. 

The new alarm was now given ; the bell rings, 
alarm guns are fired, the drum beats to arms. 
Some of the militia had gone home, when dismiss- 
ed ; but the greater part were in the neighbouring 
houses, and instantly obeyed the summons. Sixty or 
seventy appeared on the green and were drawn up 
in double ranks. At this moment the British col- 
umn of eight hundred gleaming bayonets appears, 
headed by their mounted commanders, their banners 
flying and drums beating a charge. To engage 
them with a handful of militia of course was mad- 
ness, — to fly at the sight of them, they disdained. 
The British troops rush furiously on ; their com- 
manders, with mingled threats and execrations, 
bid the Americans lay down their arms and disperse, 
and their own troops to fire. A moment's delay, 
as of compunction, follows. The order with vehe- 
ment imprecations is repeated, afid they fire. No 
one falls, and the band of self-devoted heroes, most 
of whom had never seen such a body of troops 
before, stand firm in the front of an army, outnum- 



30 

bering them ten to one. Another volley succeeds ; 
the killed and wounded drop, and it was not till 
they had returned the fire of the overwhelming 
force, that the militia were driven from the field. 
A scattered fire now succeeded on both sides while 
the Americans remained in sight ; and the British 
troops were then drawn up on the green to fire a 
volley and give a shout in honor of the victory.* 

While these incidents were taking place, and 
every moment then came charged with events which 
were to give a character to centuries, Hancock 
and Adams, though removed by their friends from 
the immediate vicinity of the force sent to appre- 
hend them, were apprized, too faithfully, that the 
w^ork of death w-as begun. The heavy and quick 
repeated vollies told them a tale, that needed no 
exposition, — which proclaimed that Great Britain 
had renounced that strong invisible tie which bound 
the descendants of England to the land of their 
fathers, and had appealed to the right of the strong- 
est. The inevitable train of consequences burst 
in prophetic fulness upon their minds ; and the 
patriot Adams, forgetting the scenes of tribulation 
through which America must pass to realize thepros- 

* See note C. 



31 

pect, and heedless that the ministers of vengeance, 
in overwhelming strength, were in close pursuit of 
his own life, uttered that memorable exclamation, 
than which nothing more generous, nothing more 
sublime can be found in the records of Grecian or 
Roman heroism, — " O, what a glorious morning is 
this ! " 

Elated with its success, the British army took 
up its march toward Concord. The intelligence 
of the projected expedition had been communicated 
to this town by Dr Samuel Prescott, in the man- 
ner already described ; and from Concord had 
travelled onward in every direction. The interval 
was employed in removing a portion of the public 
stores to the neighbouring towns, while the aged 
and infirm, the women and children, sought refuge 
in the surrounding woods. About seven o'clock 
in the morning, the glittering arms of the British 
column were seen advancing on the Lincoln road. 
A body of militia from one hundred and fifty to 
two hundred men, who had taken post for obser- 
vation on the heights above the entrance to the 
town, retire at the approach of the army of the 
enemy, first to the hill a little farther north, 
and then beyond the bridge. The British troops 
press forward into the town, and are drawn 



32 

up in front of the courthouse. Parties are thea 
ordered out to the various spots where the public 
stores and arms were supposed to be deposited. 
Much had been removed to places of safety, and 
something was saved by the prompt and innocent 
artifices of individuals. The destruction of prop- 
erty and of arms was hasty and incomplete, and 
considered as the object of an enterprise of such 
fatal consequences, it stands in shocking contrast 
with the waste of blood by which it was effected. 

I am relating events, which, though they can 
never be repeated more frequently than they de- 
serve, are yet familiar to all who hear me. I need 
not therefore attempt, nor would it be practicable 
did I attempt it, to recall the numerous interesting 
occurrences of that ever memorable day. The 
reasonable limits of a public discourse must con- 
fine us to a selection of the more prominent inci- 
dents. 

It was the first care of the British commander 
to cut off the approach of the Americans from the 
neighbouring towns, by destroying or occupying the 
bridges. A party was immediately sent to the 
south bridge and tore it up. A force of six com- 
panies, under Captains Parsons and Lowrie, was 
sent to the north bridge. Three companies under 



33 

Captain Lowrie were left to guard it, and three 
under Captain Parsons proceeded to Colonel Bar- 
rett's house, in search of provincial stores. While 
they were engaged on that errand, the militia of 
Concord, joined by their brave brethren from the 
neighbouring towns, gathered on the hill opposite the 
north bridge, under the command of Colonel Rob- 
inson and Major Buttrick. The British companies 
at the bridge were now apparently bewildered 
with the perils of their situation, and began to 
tear up the planks of the bridge ; not remembering 
that this would expose their own party, then at 
Colonel Barrett's, to certain and entire destruction. 
The Americans, on the other hand, resolved to 
keep open the communication with the town, and 
perceiving the attempt which was made to destroy 
the bridge, were immediately put in motion, with 
orders not to give the first fire. They draw near to 
the bridge, the Acton company in front, led on by 
the gallant Davis. Three alarm guns were fired 
into the water, by the British, without arresting 
the march of our citizens. The signal for a gene- 
ral discharge is then made ; — a British soldier steps 
from the ranks and fires at Major Buttrick. The 
ball passed between his arm and his side, and 
slightly wounded Mr Luther Blanchard, who stood 
5 



34 

near him. A volley instantly followed, and Cap- 
tain Davis was shot through the heart, gallantly 
marching at the head of the Acton militia against 
the choice troops of the British line. A private of 
his company, Mr Hosmer of Acton, also fell at 
his side. A general action now ensued, which 
terminated in the retreat of the British party, after 
the loss of several killed and wounded, toward the 
centre of the town, followed by the brave band 
who had driven them from their post. The ad- 
vance party of British at Colonel Barrett's was 
thus left to its fate ; and nothing would have been 
more easy than to effect its entire destruction. 
But the idea of a declared war had yet scarcely 
forced itself, with all its consequences, into the 
minds of our countrymen ; and these advanced 
companies were allovyed to return unmolested to 
the main band. 

It was noAV twelve hours since the first alarm 
had been given, the evening before, of the medi- 
tated expedition. The swift watches of that 
eventful night had scattered the tidings far and 
wide ; and widely as they spread, the people rose 
in their strength. The genius of America, on this 
the morning of her emancipation, had sounded her 
horn over the plains and upon the mountains ; and the 



35 

indignant yeomanry of the land, armed with the 
weapons which had done service in their fathers' 
hands, poured to the spot where this new and 
strange tragedy was acting. The old New Eng- 
land drums, that had beat at Louisburgh, at Quebec, 
at Martinique, at the Havana, were now sounding 
on all the roads to Concord. There were officers 
in the British line, that knew the sound ; — they 
had heard it, in the deadly breach, beneath the 
black, deep-throated engines of the French and 
Spanish castles. With the British it was a ques- 
tion no longer of protracted hostility, nor even of 
halting long enough to rest their exhausted troops, 
after a weary night's march, and all the labor, 
confusion, and distress of the day's efforts. Their 
dead were hastily buried in the public square ; 
their wounded placed in the vehicles which the 
town affijrded ; and a flight commenced, to which 
the annals of British warfare will hardly afford a 
parallel. On all the neighbouring hills were mul- 
titudes from the surrounding country, of the unarm- 
ed and infirm, of women and of children, who had 
fled from the terrors and the perils of the plunder 
and conflagration of their homes ; or were collect- 
ed, with fearful curiosity, to mark the progress of 
this storm of war. The panic fears of a calamitous 



36 

flight, oil the part of the British, transformed this 
inoffensive, timid throng into a threatening ar- 
ray of armed men ; and there was too much 
reason for the misconception. Every height of 
ground, within reach of the line of march, was 
covered with the indignant avengers of their 
slaughtered brethren. The British light companies 
were sent out to great distances as flanking par- 
ties ; but who was to flank the flankers ? Every 
patch of trees, every rock, every stream of water, 
every building, every stone wall, was lined (I use 
the words of a British officer in the battle), was 
lined with an unintermitted fire. Every cross- 
road opened a new avenue to the assailants. 
Through one of these the gallant Brooks lead up 
the minute men of Reading. At another defile, they 
were encountered by the Lexington militia, under 
Captain Parker, who, undismayed at the loss of 
more than a tenth of their number in killed and 
wounded in the morning, had returned to the con- 
flict. At first the contest was kept up by the 
British, with all the skill and valor of veteran 
troops. To a military eye it was not an unequal 
contest. The commander was not, or ought not 
to have been, taken by surprise. Eight hundred 
picked men, grenadiers and light infantry, from 



87 

the English army, were no doubt considered by 
General Gage a very ample detachment to march 
eighteen or twenty miles through an open country ; 
and a very fair match for all the resistance which 
could be made by unprepared husbandmen, without 
concert, discipline, or leaders. With about ten 
times their number, the Grecian commander had 
forced a march out of the wrecks of a field of 
battle and defeat, through the barbarous nations 
of Asia, for thirteen long months, from the plains 
of Babylon to the Black sea, through forests, 
defiles, and deserts, which the foot of civilized 
man had never trod. It was the American cause, — 
its holy foundation in truth and right, its strength 
and life in the hearts of the people, that converted 
what would naturally have been the undisturbed 
march of a strong, well provided army, into a rab- 
ble rout of terror and death. It was this, which 
sowed the fields of our pacific villages with drag- 
on's teeth ; which nerved the arm of age ; called 
the ministers and servants of the church into the 
hot fire ; and even filled with strange passion and 
manly strength the heart and the arm of the strip- 
ling. A British historian, to paint the terrific 
aspect of things that presented itself to his coun- 
trymen, declares that the rebels swarmed upon the 



38 

hills, as if they dropped from the clouds. Before 
the flying troops had reached Lexington, their 
rout was (mtire. Some of the officers had been 
made prisoners, some had been killed, and several 
wounded, and among them the commander in chief, 
Colonel Smith. The ordinary means of preserv- 
ing discipline failed ; the wounded, in chaises and 
wagons, pressed to the front and obstructed the 
road ; wherever the flanking parties, from the 
nature of the ground, were forced to come in, the 
line of march was crowded and broken ; the ammu- 
nition began to fail ; and at length the entire body 
was on a full run. " We attempted," says a 
British officer already quoted, " to stop the men 
and form them two deep, but to no purpose ; the 
confusion rather increased than lessened." An 
English historian says, the British soldiers were 
driven before the Americans like sheep ; till, by a 
last desperate effort, the officers succeeded in forc- 
ing their way to the front, " when they presented 
their swords and bayonets against the breasts of 
their own men, and told them if they advanced they 
should die." Upon this they began to form, under 
Avhat the same British officer pronounces " a very 
heavy fire," which must soon have led to the de- 
struction or capture of the whole corps. At this 



S9 

critical moment, it pleased Providence that a rein- 
forcement should arrive. Colonel Smith had sent 
back a messenger from Lexington to apprize Gen- 
eral Gage of the check he had there received, and 
of the alarm which was running through the coun- 
try. Three regiments of infantry and two divis- 
ions of marines with two fieldpieces, under the 
command of Brigadier General Lord Percy, were 
accordingly detached. They marched out of 
Boston, through Roxbury and Cambridge,* and 
came up with the flying party, in the hour of their 
extreme peril. While their fieldpieces kept the 
Americans at bay, the reinforcement drew up in 
a hollow square, into which, says the British histori- 
an, they received the exhausted fugitives, " w^ho lay 
down on the ground, with their tongues hanging 
from their mouths, like dogs after a chase." 

A half an hour was given to rest ; the march 
was then resumed ; and under cover of the field- 
pieces, every house in Lexington, and on the road 
downwards, was plundered and set on fire. Though 
the flames in most cases were speedily extinguished, 
several houses were destroyed. Notwithstanding 
the attention of a great part of the Americans was 
thus drawn off; and although the British force 
* See note D. 



40 

was now more than doubled, their retreat still 
wore the aspect of a flight. The Americans filled 
the heights that overhung the road, and at every 
defile, the struggle was sharp and bloody. At 
West Cambridge, the gallant Warren, never dis- 
tant when danger was to be braved, appeared in 
the field, and a musket ball soon cut off a lock of 
hair from his temple. General Heath was with him, 
nor does there appear till this moment, to have 
t)een any effective command among the American 
forces. 

Below West Cambridge, the militia from Dor- 
chester, Roxbury, and Brookline came up. The 
British fieldpieres began to lose their terror. A 
sharp skirmish followed, and many fell on both 
sides. Indignation and outraged humanity strug- 
gled on the one hand, veteran discipline and des- 
peration on the other ; and the contest, in more 
than one instance, was man to man, and bayonet 
to bayonet. 

The British officers had been compelled to de- 
scend from their horses to escape the certain destruc- 
tion, which attended their exposed situation. The 
wounded, to the number of two hundred, now pre- 
sented the most distressing and constantly increas- 
ing obstruction to the progress of the march. 



41 

Near one hundred brave men had fallen in this 
disastrous flight ; a considerable number had been 
made prisoners ; a round or two of ammunition 
only remained ; and it was not till late in the 
evening, nearly twenty-four hours from the time 
when the first detachment was put in motion, that 
the exhausted remnant reached the heights of 
Charlestown. The boats of the vessels of war 
were immediately employed to transport the 
wounded ; the remaining British troops in Boston 
came over to Charlestown to protect their weary 
countrymen during the night ; and before the close 
of the next day the royal army was formally be- 
sieged in Boston. 

Such, fellow citizens, imperfectly sketched in 
their outline, were the events of the day we cele- 
brate ; a day as important as any recorded in the 
history of man. Such were the first of a series of 
actions, that have extensively changed and are 
every day more extensively changing the condition 
and prospects of the human race. Such were the 
perils, such the sufferings of our fathers, which it 
has pleased Providence to crown with a blessing 
beyond the most sanguine hopes of those who 
then ventured their all in the cause. 
6 



42 

It is a proud anniversary for our neighbourhood. 
We have cause for honest complacency, that when 
the distant citizen of our own republic, when the 
stranger from foreign lands, inquires for the spots 
where the noble blood of the revolution began to 
flow, where the first battle of that great and glori- 
ous contest was fought, he is guided through the 
villages of Middlesex, to the plains of Lexington 
and Concord. It is a commemoration of our soil, 
to which ages, as they pass, will add dignity and 
interest ; till the names of Lexington and Concord, 
in the annals of freedom, will stand by the side of 
the most honourable names in Roman or Grecian 
story. 

It was one of those great days, one of those 
elemental occasions in the world's affairs, when 
the people rise, and act for themselves. Some 
organization and preparation had been made; but, 
from the nature of the case, with scarce any effect 
on the events of that day. It may be doubted, 
whether there was an efficient order given the 
whole day to any body of men, as large as a regi- 
ment. It was the people, in their first capacity, 
as citizens and as freemen, starting from their beds 
at midnight, from their firesides, and from their 
fields, to take their own cause into their own 



hands. Such a spectacle is the height of the moral 
sublime ; when the want of every thing is fully 
made up by the spirit of the cause ; and the soul 
within stands in place of discipline, organization, 
resources. In the prodigious efforts of a veteran 
army, beneath the dazzling splendor of their 
array, there is something revolting to the reflective 
mind. The ranks are filled with the desperate, 
the mercenary, the depraved; an iron slavery, by 
the name of subordination, merges the free will of 
One hundred thousand men, in the unqualified des- 
potism of one ; the humanity, mercy, and remorse, 
which scarce ever desert the individual bosom, are 
sounds without a meaning to that fearful, ravenous, 
irrational monster of prey, a mercenary army. 
It is hard to say who are most to be commiserat- 
ed, the wretched people on whom it is let loose, 
or the still more wretched people whose substance 
has been sucked out, to nourish it into strength 
and fury. But in the efforts of the people, of 
the people struggling for their rights, moving not 
in organized, disciplined masses, but in their spon- 
taneous action, man for man, and heart for heart, — 
though I like not war nor any of its works, — 
there is something glorious. They can then move 
forward without orders, act together without combi- 



44 

nation, and brave the flaming lines of battle, with- 
out entrenchments to cover, or walls to shield 
them. No dissolute camp has worn off from the 
feelings of the youthful soldier the freshness of 
that home, where his mother and his sisters sit 
waiting, with tearful eyes and aching hearts, to 
hear good news from the wars ; no long service in 
the ranks of a conqueror has turned the veteran's 
heart into marble ; their valor springs not from 
recklessness, from habit, from indifference to the 
preservation of a life, knit by no pledges to the life 
of others. But in the strength and spirit of the 
cause alone they act, they contend, they bleed. In 
this, they conquer. The people always conquer. 
They always must conquer. Armies may be de- 
feated ; kings may be overthrown, and new 
dynasties imposed by foreign arms on an ignorant 
and slavish race, that care not in what language 
the covenant of their subjection runs, nor in 
whose name the deed of their barter and sale is 
made out. But the people never invade ; and 
when they rise against the invader, are never sub- 
dued. If they are driven from the plains, they fly 
to the mountains. Steep rocks and everlasting 
hills are their castles ; the tangled, pathless thicket 
their palisado, and nature, — God, is their ally. 



45 

Now he overwhelms the hosts of their enemies 
beneath his drifting mountains of sand ; now he 
buries them beneath a falling atmosphere of polar 
snows ; he lets loose his tempests on their fleets ; 
he puts a folly into their counsels, a madness into 
the hearts of their leaders ; and never gave and 
and never will give a full and final triumph over a 
virtuous, gallant people, resolved to be free. 

There is another reflection, which deserves to 
be made, while we dwell on the events of the 
nineteenth of April. It was the work of the 
country. The cities of America, particularly the 
metropolis of our own state, bore their part nobly 
in the revolutionary contest. It is not unjust to 
say, that much of the spirit which animated Amer- 
ica, particularly before the great appeal to arms, 
grew out of the comparison of opinions and concert 
of feeling, which might not have existed, without 
the convenience of assembling which our large 
towns aflbrd. But if we must look to the city for 
a part of the in;pulse, we must look to the country 
at large, for the heart to be moved, — for the strength 
and vigor to persevere in the motion. It was the 
great happiness of America, that her cities were no 
larger, no more numerous, no nearer to each other ; 
that the strength, the intelligence, the spirit of the 



46 

people were diiTused over plains, and encamped 
on the hills. 

In most of the old and powerful states of Europe, 
the nation is identified with the capital, and the cap- 
ital with the court. France must fall with the cit- 
izens of Paris, and the citizens of Paris with a few 
courtiers, cabinet ministers, and princes. No doubt 
the English ministry thought that by holding Bos- 
ton, they held New England ; that the country 
was conquered in advance, by the military occu- 
pation of the great towns. They did not know 
that every town and village in America had discuss- 
ed the great questions at issue for itself; and in 
its town-meetings, and committees of correspond- 
ence and safety, had come to the resolution, that 
America must not be taxed by England. The Eng- 
lish government did not understand, — we hardly 
understood, ourselves, till we saw it in action, — 
the operation of a state of society, where every man 
is or may be a freeholder, a voter for every elec- 
tive office, a candidate for every one ; where the 
means of a good education are universally accessi- 
ble ; where the artificial distinctions of society are 
known but in a slight degree ; where glaring con- 
trasts of condition are rarely met with ; where few 
are raised by the extreme of wealth above their 



47 

fellow-men, and fewer sunk by the extreme of 
poverty beneath it. The English ministry had 
not reasoned upon the natural growth of such a 
soil ; that it could not permanently bear either a 
colonial, or a monarchical government ; that the 
only true and native growth of such a soil was a 
perfect independence and an intelligent republican- 
ism. Independence, because such a country must 
disdain to go over the water to find another to 
protect it ; Republicanism, because the people of 
such a country must disdain to look up for protec- 
tion to any one class among themselves. The entire 
action of these principles was unfolded to the world 
on the nineteenth of April, 1775. Without waiting 
to take an impulse from any thing but their own 
breasts, and in defiance of the whole exerted powers 
of the British empire, the yeomanry of the country 
rose as a man, and set their lives on this dear stake 
of liberty. 

When we look back on the condition in which 
America stood on the 19th of April, 1775; and 
compare it with that in which it stands this day, 
we can find no language of gratitude with which 
to do justice to those, who took the lead in the 
revolutionary cause. The best gratitude, the best 



48 

thanks, will be an imitation of their example. It 
would be an exceedingly narrow view of the part 
assigned to this country on the stage of the na- 
tions, to consider the erection of an independent 
and representative government as the only political 
object at which the revolution aimed, and the 
only political improvement which our duty re- 
quires. These are two all-important steps, indeed, 
in the work of meliorating the state of society. 
The first gives the people of America the sovereign 
power of carrying its will into execution ; the 
second furnishes an equitable and convenient mode 
of ascertaining what the will of the people is. 
But shall we stop here ? shall we make no use of 
these two engines, by whose combined action 
every individual mind enjoys a share in the sove- 
reign power of this great nation ? Most of the 
civil and social institutions which still exist in 
the country, were brought by our fathers from the 
old worid, and are strongly impressed with the 
character of the state of society which there prevails. 
Under the influence of necessity, these institu- 
tions have Jaeen partially reformed, and rendered, 
to a certain degree, harmonious with the nature of 
a popular government. But much remains to be 
done, to make the work of revolution complete. 



49 

The whole business of public instruction, of the 
administration of justice, of military defence in 
time of peace, needs to be revolutionized ; that is, 
to be revised and made entirely conformable to the 
interests and wishes of the great mass. It is time, 
in short, to act upon the maxim in which the wis- 
dom of all ages is wrapped up, the voice of the 
PEOPLE IS THE VOICE OF GOD. Apart froui in- 
spired revelation, there is no way, in which the 
will of heaven is made known, but by the sound, 
collective sense of the majority of men. It is 
given to no privileged family, to no hereditary 
ruler ; it is given to no commanding genius ; it is 
given to no learned sage ; it is given to no circle 
of men to pronounce this sacred voice. It must 
be uttered by the people, in their own capacity ; 
and whensoever it is uttered, I say not it ought 
to be, but that it will be obeyed. 

But it is time to relieve your patience. I need 
not labor to impress you with a sense of the duty, 
which devolves on those, whose sires achieved the 
ever memorable exploits of this day. The lesson, 
I know, has not been lost upon you. Nowhere 
have the spirit and principles of the revolution 
preserved themselves in greater purity; noWhere 
have the institutions, to which the revolution led. 
7 



50 

been more firmly cherished. The toils and suffer- 
ings of that day were shared by a glorious band 
of patriots, whose name was your boast while 
living ; whose memory you will never cease to 
cherish. The day we commemorate called the 
noble farmer of Middlesex — the heroic Prescott — to 
the field; and impelled him, not to accept, but to 
solicit the post of honor and danger, on the 17th 
of June : — noble I call him, for when did coronet 
or diadem ever confer distinction, like the glory 
which rests on that man's name. In the perils of 
this day, the venerable Gerry bore his part. This 
was the day, which called the lamented Brooks 
and Eustis to their country's service ; which en- 
listed them, blooming in the freshness and beauty 
of youth, in that sacred cause, to which the 
strength of their manhood and the grey hairs of 
their age were devoted. The soil which holds 
their honored dust shall never be unworthy of 
them. 

What pride did you not justly feel in that soil, 
when you lately welcomed the nation's guest — the 
venerable champion of America — to the spot, where 
that first note of struggling freedom was uttered, 
which sounded across the the Atlantic, and drew 
him from all the delights of life, to enlist in our 



51 

cause. Here, you could tell him, our fathers 
fought and fell, before they knew whether another 
arm would be raised to secojid them. — No Wash- 
ington had appeared to lead, no Lafayette had 
hastened to assist, no charter of independence had 
yet breathed the breath of life into the cause, when 
the 19th of April called our fathers to the field. 
What remains, then, but to guard the precious 
birthright of our liberties ; to draw from the soil 
which we inhabit, a consistency in the principles 
so nobly vindicated, so sacredly sealed thereon. 
It shall never be said, while distant regions, 
wheresoever the temples of freedom are reared, 
are sending back their hearts to the plains of Lex- 
ington and Concord, for their brighest and purest 
examples of patriotic daring, that we whose lives 
are cast on these favoured spots, can become in- 
different to the exhortation, which breathes to us 
from every sod of the valley. Those principles, 
which others may adopt on the colder ground of 
their reason and their truth, we are bound to sup- 
port by the dearest and deepest feelings. Where- 
soever the torch of liberty shall expire, where- 
soever the manly simplicity of our land shall perish 
beneath the poison of luxury, wheresoever the cause 
which called our fathers this day to arms, and the 



52 

principles which sustained their hearts in that stern 
encounter, may be deserted or betrayed, — it shall 
not, fellow citizens, it shall not be, on the soil 
which was moistened with their blood. The names 
of Marathon and Thermopylae, after ages of sub- 
jection, still nerve the arm of the Grecian patriot ; 
and should the foot of a tyrant, or of a slave, ap- 
proach these venerated spots, the noble hearts that 
bled at Lexington and Concord, " all dust as they 
are," * would beat beneath the sod with indigna- 
tion. 

Honor, this day, to the venerable survivors of 
that momentous day, which tried men's souls. 
Great is the happiness they are permitted to enjoy, 
in uniting, within the compass of their own expe- 
rience, the doubtful struggles and the full blown 
prosperity of our happy land. May they share the; 
welfare they witness around them ; it is the work 
of their hands, the fruit of their toils, the price of 
their lives freely hazarded that their children 
might live free. Bravely they dared ; patiently, 
aye more than patiently, — heroically, piously, 
they suffered ; largely, richly, may they enjoy. 
Most of their companions arc already departed ; 

' * Bossuet ; Oraison funebre de la Reine d' Angleterre. 



53 

hi us Feuew our triljute of respect this day to their 
honored memory. Numbers present will recol- 
lect the affecting solemnities, with which you ac- 
companied to his last home, the brave, the lament- 
ed Buttrick. With trailing banners, and mournful 
music, and all the touching ensigns of military 
sorrow, you followed the bier of the fallen soldier, 
over the ground where he led the determined band 
of patriots on the morn of the revolution. 

But chiefly to those who fell ; to those who stood 
in the breach, at the breaking of that day of blood 
at Lexington ; to those who joined in battle and 
died honorably, facing the foe at Concord ; to 
those who fell in the gallant pursuit of the flying 
enemy ; — let us this day pay a tribute of grateful 
admiration. The old and the young ; the grey- 
haired veteran, the stripling in the flower of youth ; 
husbands, fathers, brethren, sons ; — they stood side 
by side, and fell together, like the beauty of Israel 
on their high places. 

We have founded this day a monument to their 
memory. When the hands that rear it are motion- 
less, when the feeble voice is silent, which speaks 
our fathers' praise, the engraven stone shall bear 
witness to other ages, of our gratitude and their 
worth. And ages still farther on, when the mon- 



54 

ument itself, like those who build it, shall have 
ciuaibled to dust, the happy aspect of the land 
which our fathers redeemed, the liberty they 
achieved, the institutions they founded, shall re- 
main one common, eternal monument to their 
precious memory. 



NOTES. 



J^ote A, page 20. 

That the lanterns were observed in CharlestoTvn, we are 
informed by Colonel Revere, in the interesting communication 
in the Collections of the Historical Society, from which this 
part of the narrative is chiefly taken. A tr;. Jition by private 
channels has descended, that these lanterns in the North Church 
were quickly noticed by the officers of the British army, on 
duty on the evening of the 18th. To prevent the alarm being 
communicated by these signals into the country, the British 
officers, who had noticed them, hastened to the church to ex- 
tinguish them. Their steps were heard on the stairs in the 
tover of the church, by the sexton, who had lighted the lanterns. 
To escape discovery, he himself extinguished the lanterns, and 
passing by the officers on the stairs, concealed himself in the 
vaults of the church. He was, a day or two after, arrested, 
while discharging the duties of his office at a funeral, tried, and 
condemned to death ; but respited on a threat of retaliation 
from Gen. Washington, and finally exchanged. This anecdote 



56 



was related to me, with many circumstances of particularity, 
by one who had often heard it from the sexton himself. 



Xote B,page 21. 

The manner in which Colonel Revere was received at Lex- 
ington, which is not related in his own letter, will appear from 
the following extract from the deposition of Colonel William 
Munroe, which, with several other similar interesting docu- 
ments, forms a part of the Appendix to the pamphlet alluded 
to in the next note. 

" About midnight. Colonel Paul Revere rode up and request- 
ed admittance. I told him the family had just retired, and re- 
quested they might not be disturbed by any noise about the 
house. ' Noise ." said he, ' you '11 have noise enough before 
long. The regulars are coming out.' We then permitted him 
to pass." p. 33. 



J^ote C,page 30. 

It will be perceived, that, in drawing up the account of the 
transactions at Lexington, reference has been had to the testi- 
mony contained in the pamphlet lately published, entitled, 
" History of the Battle at Lexington, on the morning of the I9th 
of April, 1775- By Elias Phinney." While in this pamphlet 



57 

several interesting facts are added, on the strength of the de- 
positions of surviving actors in the scene, to the accounts pre- 
viously existing; there is nothing, perhaps, in them, which 
may not be reconciled with those previously existing accounts, 
if due allowance be made for the sole object for which the lat- 
ter were originally published — to show that the British were the 
aggressors ; — for the hurry and confusion of the moment ; and 
for the different aspect of the scene as witnessed by different 
persons, from different points of view. It has, however, been 
my aim not to pronounce on questions in controversy ; but to 
state the impression left on my own mind after an attentive 
examination of all the evidence. 



Note D, page 39. 

An interesting anecdote relative to this march of Lord Percy 
has been communicated to me by a veteran of the Revolution, 
who bore his part in the events of the day. Intelligence hav- 
ing been promptly received of Lord Percy's being detached, the 
Selectmen of Cambridge, by order of the Committee of Safety, 
caused the planks of the Old Bridge to be taken up. Had this 
been effectually done, it would have arrested the progress of 
Lord Percy. But the planks, though all taken up, instead of 
being thrown into the river or removed to a distance, were 
piled up on the causeway, at the Cambridge end of the bridge. 
8 



58 

But little time was therefore lost by Lord Percy, in sending 
over men upon the string-pieces of the bridge, who replaced 
the planks, so as to admit the passage of the troops. This was, 
however, so hastily and insecurely done, that when a convoy 
of provision wagons, with a sergeant's guard, which had follow- 
ed in the rear of the reinforcement, reached the bridge, the 
planks were found to be too loosely laid to admit a safe pas- 
sage ; and a good deal of time was consumed in adjusting them. 
The convoy at length passed ; but after such a delay, that Lord 
Percy's army was out of sight. The officer who commanded 
the convoy was unacquainted with the roads, and was misdi- 
rected by the inhabitants at Cambridge. Having at last, after 
much lost time, been put into the right road, the body of troops 
under Lord Perc)"^ was so far advanced, as to afford the convoy 
no protection. A plan was accordingly laid and executed by 
the citizens of West Cambridge (then Menotomy) to arrest this 
convoy. The alarum-list, or body of exempts, under Captain 
Frost, by whom this exploit was effected, acted under the di- 
rection of a negro, who had served in the French war; and 
who, on this occasion, displayed the utmost skill and spirit. 
The history of Gordon, and the other accounts which follow 
him, attribute the capture of the convoy to the Rev. Dr Payson 
of Chelsea. Those who have farther information alone can 
judge between the two accounts. The Rev. Mr Thaxter, of 
Edgartown, in a letter lately published in the United States 
Literary Gazette, has ascribed the same exploit to the Rev. 
Edward Brooks of Medford. Mr Brooks early hastened to the 



59 

field as a vorunteer that day ; and is said to have preserved the 
life of Lieut. Gould of the 18th regiment, who was made 
prisoner at Concord Bridge ; but there is, I believe, no 
ground for ascribing to him the conduct of the affair in ques- 
tion. 



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